


elated, splitting blue

by surgicalstainless



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Flying, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 17:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3905110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surgicalstainless/pseuds/surgicalstainless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd be climbing, thrusters straining skyward, wings pressing into the wind for every last inch of altitude — and there it was, that moment when he leveled out, engines suddenly silent. Just then he wasn't climbing or falling. Trajectory met gravity and canceled each other out, just for a second, and that was the moment Sam was standing on air.</p><p>Then gravity won, his stomach caught up, and the thrusters kicked back in, and it was all downhill from there. Worth it, though. Absolutely worth it, every time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	elated, splitting blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bouzingo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bouzingo/gifts).



> Title from Ted Hughes' poem [March morning unlike others.](http://z-delenda-est.tumblr.com/post/118545504221/blue-haze-bees-hanging-in-the-air-at-the) It seemed to fit.
> 
> Lovely and amazing [Amethystina](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Amethystina/pseuds/Amethystina) did the beta-reading.
> 
> Set pre- _Age of Ultron_.

It's a powerful thing, falling.

There was a moment at the top of a loop that Sam loved. He'd be climbing, thrusters straining skyward, wings pressing into the wind for every last inch of altitude — and there it was, that moment when he leveled out, engines suddenly silent. Just then he wasn't climbing or falling. Trajectory met gravity and canceled each other out, just for a second, and that was the moment Sam was standing on air.

Then gravity won, his stomach caught up, and the thrusters kicked back in, and it was all downhill from there. Worth it, though. Absolutely worth it, every time.

When Sam landed after that very first test flight, face flushed and wind-stung, with boots that resented the earth, the questions started almost at once.

"How was it?"

"How did it handle?"

"How did the harness fit? Are you hurting anywhere?"

"Are you all right, Airman?"

Sam had looked over his shoulder — over his God-almighty _furled wings_ — and caught sight of Riley, landed just behind him. Riley's face was split in a wide, reckless grin and his knees were shaky, like they'd forgotten their job in that short time aloft. Sam suspected he had a grin to match. He turned to the men and women around him, the ones with clipboards and cameras instead of wings, and he gave them a lie.

"I'm fine, everything's fine."

Anything to get back in the air again.

Lies came easy to a medic, and that was the very first one you learned. _You're going to be fine._ There was a lie for every occasion, a lie for every type of ear. _This won't hurt a bit_ was an old favorite, as was _You'll be up and about in no time_. They were a great anodyne, lies were, a placebo pill that never failed to go down easy. _It's perfectly safe._

_Things happen for a reason._

_We did everything we could._

Sam had spent thousands of hours training to save lives. It took him a few hundred hours beyond that to figure out the flipside: some people can't be saved. 

He'd been climbing when the RPG hit, fighting for altitude to escape the small-arms fire, and the bright bloom of flame was shock enough that he just — stopped. Sam hung there, standing on air for — well, a lifetime, if he was being bitter about it. He felt like he was caught on the envelope of the shockwave, some kind of weird time dilation. Black bits of debris fell like burning feathers. Rounds tore the air. Forces battled it out in awful roaring silence. Gravity won. Sam fell. Thrusters kicked back in.

_There was nothing I could do._

Felt like his stomach never did catch up.

—★—

The man on the Mall ran like he wanted to lift off from the earth. Sam could sympathize — gravity felt like a bully to him too, most days. Every day, now that his wings were locked up in a bunker at Fort Meade. Run fast enough, maybe you really could get a millisecond of freefall with every step. 

Sam tried it. Guess he wasn't fast enough.

The man introduced himself, not that he needed to. "Steve Rogers," and a hand up with a carefully controlled amount of strength. Sam wondered if he'd had to practice not to send folks flying.

He didn't know what made him speak up when Steve turned to leave. Maybe it was the matinee-idol smile, worn thin with overuse. Maybe it was that the man who became Captain America looked like he knew what it was to fall.

"You must miss the good old days, huh?" Sam braced himself, a little.

Steve avoided his eyes and smiled while he lied. "Things aren't so bad."

Yeah. Sam kept it light, flirted a little — who could blame him? It was _Captain America!_ — and tossed out a line, just tentative, just to see if Steve would take it.

"Any time you want to stop by the VA, make me look awesome in front of the girl at the front desk..."

Turns out you never do get out of the habit of trying to save people.

—★—

Captain America, Sam was learning, really liked to jump off things. 

The Air Force had trained him for everything, or it had tried to, and Sam was very thankful for that as he zeroed in on the speck of red, white, and blue plummeting toward the Potomac. The flying, though — the swoops, the drops, the rolls, right out there on the bleeding edge of what the wings could do. If Nazis hadn't been shooting at him he'd have laughed aloud for the sheer joy of it. Instead he stooped into a dive and caught the supersoldier, and thanked his cussed trainers all that patriotic muscle didn't pull his arm right off.

Steve held on like he'd trained for it, too, hit the deck with light feet and a quip ready. It felt easy, matching Steve stride for stride, swapping banter. Something situationally inappropriate welled up in Sam's chest, formed a bubble in his throat that buoyed him up with _maybes_ —

The ghost of Steve's fallen friend came down and tore them from the sky.

Falling like this —

_feet over head over feet, wind whipping, single wingtip trailing crazed spirals_

— there was no grace to it at all. Sam hit the release button, pulled the ripcord, hammered into the roof of the Triskelion with a thud that hurt everywhere at once. _Sic transit_ the EXO-7.

"I'm grounded. Suit's down. Sorry, Cap."

 _"Don't worry,"_ Steve said in his ear, _"I got it."_

He lied.

—★—

By the time Steve woke up, Sam had watched him fall over and over again. 

It was all there on YouTube: shaky cellphone footage from a dozen different angles, with excited narration from people who couldn't know just what they were seeing. A body fell, small and still, scarcely discernible from the debris falling all around. Then, seconds later, another one. And slowly, inexorably, the helicarrier slid out of the sky after them. It was graceful the way newborn icebergs are graceful, and just as careless what it crushed.

Sam watched every video.

He didn't need to, he told himself. Steve was here, patched up and sleeping it off in a hospital bed, and Sam didn't think the doctors were lying when they said he'd be fine. He didn't need to watch the videos because he had them memorized, saw Steve falling every time he closed his eyes. Still, Sam kept watching.

Something happened to his stomach with each replay. It lurched, as if Sam were the one falling, instead of watching crappy low-res footage and sitting by Steve's bed in the world's most uncomfortable chair. _Just post-combat stress_ , he told himself, but it felt like a lie. Frustrated, he put his phone away and picked up a book, stared at the blurring words and saw something else entirely.

"On your left."

Sam's stomach lurched again.

_Oh._

—★—

Sam wasn't grounded for long. That was one of the perks of having new friends in high places, he supposed. Stark made an international conference call and went on a two-day engineering binge, and suddenly Sam was on the launch deck of Avengers Tower, strapping on a brand-new set of wings. Red and white, because why not. 

When Sam landed after his first test flight, smile wide and blood fizzing because the wings were _even better_ now, Steve was waiting.

"Looking good," he called, when Sam was close enough to hear. "You missed it, didn't you?"

No need to lie. "Hell yeah," Sam told him, and flared the wings wide before folding them away. He was showing off a little, but who could blame him?

Steve watched the process with appreciative eyes. "So," he said conversationally, "how much can those things lift?" 

Sam frowned. "Why, you going to fall again?"

"Wasn't planning on it," Steve told him. "But sometimes these things take you by surprise." 

He met Sam's eyes, gave him a small, soft smile. "You'll catch me, right?"

Sam's stomach lurched.

"I will," Sam said. 

It didn't feel like a lie at all.

**Author's Note:**

> You can catch me on [tumblr](http://z-delenda-est.tumblr.com), if you do that kind of thing.


End file.
